Today in History

Today is Sunday, June 30, the 182nd day of 2024. There are 184 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On June 30, 1934, Adolf Hitler launched his “blood purge” of political and military rivals in Germany in what came to be known as the “Night of the Long Knives.”

Also on this date:

In 1918, labor activist and socialist Eugene V. Debs was arrested in Cleveland, charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 for a speech he’d made two weeks earlier denouncing U.S. involvement in World War I. (Debs was sentenced to prison and disenfranchised for life.)

In 1921, President Warren G. Harding nominated former President William Howard Taft to be chief justice of the United States, succeeding the late Edward Douglass White.

In 1936, Margaret Mitchell’s novel “Gone With the Wind” was released.

In 1958, the U.S. Senate passed the Alaska statehood bill by a vote of 64-20.

In 1971, the Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, that the government could not prevent The New York Times or The Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers.

In 1971, A Soviet space mission ended in tragedy when three cosmonauts aboard Soyuz 11 were found dead of asphyxiation inside their capsule after it had returned to Earth.

In 1985, 39 American hostages from a hijacked TWA jetliner were freed in Beirut after being held 17 days.

In 1986, the Supreme Court, in Bowers v. Hardwick, ruled 5-4 that states could outlaw homosexual acts between consenting adults (however, the nation’s highest court effectively reversed this decision in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas).

In 1994, the U.S. Figure Skating Association stripped Tonya Harding of the national championship and banned her for life for her role in the attack on rival Nancy Kerrigan.

In 2009, American soldier Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl went missing from his base in eastern Afghanistan, and was later confirmed to have been captured by insurgents after walking away from his post. (Bergdahl was released on May 31, 2014 in exchange for five Taliban detainees; he pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, but was spared a prison sentence by a military judge.)

In 2012, Islamist Mohammed Morsi became Egypt’s first freely elected president as he was sworn in during a pair of ceremonies.

In 2016, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that transgender people would be allowed to serve openly in the U.S. military, ending one of the last bans on service in the armed forces.

In 2019, President Donald Trump became the first sitting US president to set foot in North Korea, meeting Kim Jong-un at the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.

In 2020, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed a landmark bill retiring the last state flag bearing the Confederate battle emblem. Boston’s arts commission voted unanimously to remove a statue depicting a freed slave kneeling at Abraham Lincoln’s feet.

In 2022, Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.

Today’s Birthdays: Actor Lea Massari (“L’Avventura”) is 91. Actor Nancy Dussault (doo-SOH’) is 88. Olympic track champion Billy Mills is 86. Oceanographer Robert Ballard is 82. Singer-songwriter Glenn Shorrock (Little River Band) is 80. Jazz musician Stanley Clarke is 73. Actor David Garrison (“Married…with Children) is 72. Actor-comedian David Alan Grier is 68. Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen is 66. Actor Vincent D’Onofrio is 65. Actor Deirdre Lovejoy (“The Wire”) is 62. Actor Rupert Graves is 61. Boxer Mike Tyson is 58. Actor Monica Potter is 53. Actor Rick Gonzalez is 45. Actor Lizzy Caplan is 42. Country music singer-songwriter Cole Swindell is 41. Singer and actress Fantasia is 40. Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps is 39. Actor Sean Marquette (“The Goldbergs”) is 35. Baseball player Trea Turner is 31.